Rats with wings

At the company where I work there is a weekly ritual. It is repeated every Friday and so it is aptly called Friday Treats. It's the day of the week on which the company spends a bit of extra money on its employees and treats them to a little something. This, maybe more than anything else makes Friday the most hotly awaited day of the week.
The ritual is performed by two girls from the administration department who go to every floor and deposit on each one three trays with snacks of some sort. The nature of the snacks varies from week to week; there have been things like bacon and sausage rolls (the British love them but I stay away), cookies, various kinds of pastries and cakes, cheese sticks and crackers and all sorts of other unhealthy stuff. The agonising bit (for some people at least) is that the treats are not served at the same time every week. So, come Friday, you start seeing people behave like kids waiting for Christmas Day - they know it will come but when? By 10 o'clock you'll normally start hearing people speculate what it'll be today - maybe sausage rolls. At 11 they still hope it'll be sausage rolls. By 12 they tend to get a bit edgy and also sadly rule out that it'll be sausage rolls (since it's too late for breakfast). By around 1 or 2 there rumours start circulating that it might be this or that because somebody says he's talked to one of the girls. Finally, if it takes until 3 then the anticipation reaches its climax.
So, when the two girls finally maneuver the trays throught the door the excitement spread like a shock wave through the office. You can pratically feel it. Now it is important to note that the people on my floor - all of them developers like myself - are normally extremely reserved, shy even, and most of all quiet. But this weekly event seems to bring out the predator in them. And that's saying a lot considering that usually they hardly even look anybody in the face. To say that people home in on the trays like a pack of hungry wolves, a flock of vultures or a swarm of flies would not adequately capture the situation. They don't even wait until the trays have been put down! By the time the girls have reached the table where they leave the trays they're already in the middle of a throng. Like hungry seagulls people descend on the trays and those who carry them. Hands dart in and out, snapping and grabbing. The girls have to fight their way out of the mass of bodies pushing and shoving to get at the food. Some keen specimens even break into a run to get there before others. Sometimes I can't help but quietly marvel at the fact that they make it out alive. Ever seen the seagulls in Hitchcock's The Birds or Pixar's Finding Nemo? It's like that. "Mine, mine, mine!"
Then, after only a few minutes, everything is over. Everywhere people sit quietly at their desks again munching contently. All tension has dissipated. People breathe freely again. The red haze has lifted. Things have returned to normal. There's nothing left.
You can almost see the predators happily belching up the bones of their unfortunate prey. Within a few minutes three trays have been cleared of anything remotely edible.
Then the long wait begins anew. The tension mounts again. Until next Friday...